Well, It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time!

UPDATE (28/07/07)

So... Unfortunately work has conspired to stop me from being able to do the blogathon, I was expecting to have to work a few hours over the weekend but now it turns out that I'm going to have to work for six hours today and ten hours tomorrow!

So even armed with a laptop and dial up I'm not going to be able to do it, with the best will in the world I'm going to have to actually do some work when I go in, oh well, maybe next year I'll actually get a weekend off? The bit of money that I have raised will still go to the charity and maybe I'll have a go at something else soon



I’ve been mulling over something for a week or two now, it seemed like a good idea when I first saw it but internet cynicism took over and I felt I needed to check up on it’s legitimacy first not to mention I needed to decide if I really did have the determination to complete the task, something that I’ve lacked with most things for a while now!

So after much deliberation and investigation I have decided to attempt a Blogathon next Saturday! The idea is that you post to your blog every thirty minutes for 24 hours and get sponsorship for a charity, either per post or just a lump sum if you manage to complete it.

I heard of it via one of my flickr contacts and was a little wary of asking people for money without knowing for sure it was going to get where it was meant to but when you set up your Blog on Blogathon all you’re actually asking people to do is pledge money. When it comes to handing over the dosh it goes straight to the online donation page of the charity of your choice (which you provide the link to) so no chance it won’t get there. Or in some cases, myself included, to a ‘Just Giving’ page, which is a great way to focus your personal fundraising and still sends the money direct to the charity.

I had a bit of a problem deciding which charity to choose, after all there are so many causes in need of help and my eventual choice may not seem a particularly noble one in the eyes of some but it’s one close to my heart – Cats!

I chose the Cats Protection League because I think it does a great deal to help not just rehome the cats that end up in their care but also to try to stop, via neutering and trying to teach responsible cat care, the problem of unwanted cats and strays. If you love cats then they’re helping out our feline friends and if you hate cats then think of it as helping to fund the people that are trying to get that scruffy stray cat out of your vegetable garden once and for all.

Our current feline housemate Smodge came from the Basingstoke Cats Protection League so I figure I owe them a little bed and board.

So if you fancy a laugh I suggest checking my blog now and again from 2pm Saturday 28th July (Everyone worldwide starts at the same time, hence it’s different in each time zone, the UK’s lucky, we can have a nice leisurely afternoon kick off). I will pre write some entries (it’s going to be hard enough to stay awake for 24hrs let alone think for that long!) but not all of them, and I’m bound to post a few pictures, but tempting though it is I’ll try to resist the urge just to post a photo or a YouTube video every 30 mins. And if you fancy digging into your pockets you can always make a pledge – please.


To Pledge money to my charity via Blogathon go to Their List Of Blogs sort them alphabetically (makes it easier) then look for Big Fish Little Fish Cardboard Box, click on the link and pledge your sponsorship, it shows as dollars on the blog page but as the donations are made directly to a uk charity it all ends up in sterling.

Bill's Plannin...

(photo by cloudasmoke)


Wikipedia describes lol Cats as a compound of lol and cat (you think!) and, as photo's of cats with humorous captions.

Even flickr has spawned a group for them now, which I was looking through earlier when I found this, probably one of the funniest I've seen so far.

Of course as I have all the necessary equipment (ie a Cat!) I've had a few goes myself - What do you think?

Take Me To The Kittens!

So there I am, aimlessly trawling through flickr when I came across a group called The Photographer's Club. I decided to have a look at a few of the pics but then after two or three I was greeted by a warning message. Apparently the photo that I was about to look at fell outside my current SafeSearch filter (didn't know I had one!) and I had to press an extra button to view it. The photo itself was nothing distressing or obscene but what made me laugh was the toolbar at the top of the page that says...

If you've changed your mind about viewing this you can escape - take me to the kittens!

... and it really does take you to the kittens, and some very cute one's at that. I can recommend Junkus, kitten pics very funny.

It's nice to know that flickr's looking after me :)

May The Paws Be With You :)

More and more often people are posting little icons with thier comments on flickr and most of the time they really annoy me, they clutter up the comments and make them quite hard to read but having recently been invited to join the 'Kitty Stormtroopers' group (don't laugh) I had to smile when I saw the graphic they used, it's the best one I've seen so far :)

WLTM

Another extract from my Bad Cats Book. If you like these then have a look at My cat Hates You.Com .

Of Mice And Mogs

I had to do something yesterday that I hated having to do. Having never knowingly killed anything larger than a bug in my life (Oh and a pheasant that forgot to look both ways when he crossed the road!) the idea of setting anything other than a humane mousetrap was something I found abhorrent. However we’ve had a bit of a problem with them over the last week or so and unfortunately even I had to agree it had to be done. Cute though I think they are I don’t want to share my home with them.

We’re fairly certain that as opposed to having mice in our house, the mice are being bought into the house by Smodge - my cat. So why has he suddenly decided to start bringing his victims home with him, and what’s more bringing them home alive!

I did a bit of searching around to find out about the whole cat/mice thing. Apparently it’s all about the Mother cat teaching her kittens to hunt. The first stage is to bring home a dead mouse and eat it in front of them; eventually they get the idea and join in. Next she brings them a dead one all of their own and lets them tuck in. Once they’ve got used to mice on the menu mummy then brings them one that’s maimed but still moving and lets her brood have a go at catching it themselves, then eventually once they’ve got the idea she brings them a nice live one and lets them take their hunting test.

So is Smodge trying to teach us to hunt? If he is then he must have sussed out that we’re crap at it by now! We’ve only managed to catch one out of about half a dozen, give up Smodge – we are never going to get the hang of it!

Or is it nothing more complex than the fact it’s winter and he prefers a little warmth and home comfort whilst torturing his prey? Either way after finding one of my lipsticks and a couple of dusters had been eaten and spending two nights trying to sleep whilst listening to the rather disturbing sounds of little feet scrambling around somewhere beneath my bed I’d had more than the humanitarian in me could take.

I had set the humane trap for two nights in a row and I’d actually seen the mouse run into it, get a nice chunk of the Mars Bar bait and leg it straight back out again, unharmed but also uncaged! I had a long chat with it, I explained that its last chance for mercy was to get in the humane trap and stay there before I went to bed, but did he listen? No! So very reluctantly I set the nasty one before I went to bed.

I was prepared to hear it snap in the night, I was prepared to find a dead mouse in the morning, but I was not prepared for what happened! I caught my finger in the trap when I first set it and it really hurt so I felt a little consolation in the thought that he probably wouldn’t know much about it, or so I hoped.

The reality was very different. I was woken up at about 3am this morning by a strange sort of nibbling sound, followed by a sort of dragging sound. I listened for a while then put the light on and was horrified to find the poor little mouse was caught by one of it’s back legs and tail in the trap and was dragging itself and the trap along the floor, it looked very much still alive and very very frightened.

I can’t stand to see animals suffer, not even annoying mice but there wasn’t much I could do. If I released it now it was going to die anyway, its leg was practically hanging off, and besides it was three o’clock in the morning and I sleep in the loft! I was not going to get dressed, walk down two floors and out into a freezing night for a half dead mouse! I couldn’t bear the thought of just leaving it there to suffer, any more than there was a hope in hell of me putting it out of its misery. So I did the only thing I could, I opened the bedroom door and gave Smodge a call! He did the job with his normal aplomb dragging the trap with the mouse towards the garden. The trap fell off eventually, thankfully without any bits of mouse still attached and so far there are no signs of any more. I am going to have nightmares about zombie mice for weeks!!

WLTM

Thanks to Bex and Lee for the funniest Christmas pressie this year, "244 not-so-pretty kitties and cats gone bad" also found at My Cat Hates You there will be many more from this book on my blog so watch this space :)

Cat Dictionary

Did someone say Mouse?
Originally uploaded by Cathy G.

Insomnia
The inability to get more than twenty hours sleep in a day

Loyalty
Staying with the same human for more than six weeks

Stress
A condition only observed in other creatures

Bird
Canned food with wings but no can

Flea
A tiny vicious dragon

Dog
A large hairy overgrown flea

Conciousness
That annoying time inbetween naps

Food
Something which must be taken at 30-minute intervals

Love
A feeling one can only truly have for oneself

Box
A possible portal to utopia which must be explored and guarded

Work
An activity carried out by mankind to maintain catkind in comfort

Humility
No known definition.

101 Uses For A Balloon Sizer!

My Cat's Got 5 Paws!

Mutant Cat
Originally uploaded by Cathy G.

Hey it's Mutant Ninja Cat :)

Cat Attack!

If you like cat's you'll love this - check out My Cat Hates You Dot Com

Meet Smodge!

I'd like to introduce Smodge, who will no doubt feature in many blog posts. He's entertaining in a slightly unhinged sort of way. I am the 'cat' lady and I will no doubt become the cliche as I get older. Kittens not kids - that's my theory. Cat's are low maintenance, self cleaning and nobody calls Social Services when you go away for the night and leave them with a big bowl of Go-Cat and fresh water but no babysitter!